IntellectBeat

Google Maps, which in the past has been attacked with several bogus edits, appears to have been marred again by another embarrassing incident. The latest goof in Google Maps comes in the wake of the recent Jawharlal Nehru University (JNU) controversy that led to the arrest of JNU Students' Union President Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid, and Anirban Bhattacharya, on charges of sedition and criminal conspiracy. Type in words like "anti national", "sedition" or "leftist" in Google Maps, and it will take you to Jawharlal Nehru University. While there could be more keywords redirecting you to the same location, but we, so far, have been able to verify only these three apart from the legitimate ones. While in the past many such incidents where Google provided users with botched up results appeared to have occurred because of the phoney edits suggested by users via the company's crowd-sourced map making tool, the latest incident doesn't seem to have ...

Unless you take a lot of selfies or need a bigger phone, Apple's new 4-inch iPhone SE is a good choice at a good price. You get the same 12-megapixel rear camera that's in the much larger iPhone 6s, but for $250 less, at about $400. You also get the same speeds and graphics capabilities. Of course, you don't get everything. The SE isn't going to be right for everyone, especially power users. Now that Apple has started taking orders, with shipments due in a week, keep these differences in mind: - Most noticeable is the front camera. The SE has an older 1.2-megapixel camera - not the 5 megapixel one in the 6s. But with software improvements, selfies taken with the SE came out better compared with the iPhone 5s it replaced. In addition, the SE's screen turns into a front-camera flash. That's more important than megapixels in darker settings. - Though you get the same rear camera as the 6s, you don't get an image-stabilizing feature found in the jumbo iPhon...

LG has relaunched its Watch Urbane 2nd Edition, after pulling it from shelves before the 2015 holiday season due to a hardware problem. Now, the smartwatch has a new name - the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE - and is available for preorder from AT&T and Verizon. It is the first smartwatch to have an integrated cellular radio and the capabilities to act as a standalone device, which could prove attractive to business customers or those looking to stay constantly connected. The LG smartwatch has an attractive, 348ppi P-OLED display and a hypoallergenic elastomer band. Verizon customers can snag one for $449.99 with a two-year contract or $499.99 without one. AT&T customers can get theirs for $199.99 with a two-year contract or $359.99 contract-free.

After four years of hype, high-end virtual reality is coming to consumers' living rooms next week with the release of the consumer edition of the Oculus Rift. The debut will be followed by the introduction of similar high-fidelity head-mounted displays, the HTC Vive and PlayStation VR. Despite comparably offering immersive windows into 360-degreee virtual worlds, each headset has a unique approach to VR, whether it's the room-detecting capabilities of the Vive or the plug-and-play simplicity of PlayStation VR. Here's a look at how the three systems are different: Oculus Rift For early adopters, Oculus will be first to market with a $599 headset that must be connected to a high-powered PC. It's worth noting that although the Rift officially launches March 28, Oculus has announced that pre-orders have already sold out and new orders won't be shipped until this summer. The headset will come with an Xbox One controller to play included games like space dogfighter ...

Tay, Microsoft's so-called chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to engage with millennials on Twitter, lasted less than a day before it was hobbled by a barrage of racist and sexist comments by Twitter users that it parroted back to them. TayTweets ( @TayandYou ), which began tweeting on Wednesday, was designed to become "smarter" as more users interacted with it, according to its Twitter biography. But it was shut down by Microsoft early on Thursday after it made a series of inappropriate tweets. A Microsoft representative said on Thursday that the company was "making adjustments" to the chatbot while the account is quiet. "Unfortunately, within the first 24 hours of coming online, we became aware of a coordinated effort by some users to abuse Tay’s commenting skills to have Tay respond in inappropriate ways," the representative said in a written statement supplied to Reuters, without elaborating. According to Tay's "about" pag...

With time-manipulating shooter Quantum Break hitting Windows 10 PC (in addition to the Xbox One), developer Remedy Entertainment revealed what graphical options you can expect when the game is out on April 5.  "By popular request, we decided to share the Windows 10 version graphics settings that you'll be able to tweak to get the most out of your gaming set-up. With options varying between on/off, minimum, medium, high and ultra, you can adjust the graphical fidelity of Quantum Break to your liking and experience the game even in 4K resolution," a post on the developer's site reads. Options range from being able to lock the frame rate to 30fps to adjust the quality of special effects and volumetric lighting. Its graphic settings do not look as anaemic as Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, promising some degree of customisation. Take a look at them below. Considering how poor Gears of War: Ultimate Edition fared on Windows 10, we wouldn't keep our hop...

Nintendo isn't the only console manufacturer with its eyes on the smartphone space. PS4 maker Sony has put its hat into the ring as well. The company announced the formation of ForwardWorks. Its purpose is to make apps for smartphones based on PlayStation games and characters.  "ForwardWorks will leverage the intellectual property of the numerous PlayStation dedicated software titles and its gaming characters as well as the knowledge and know-how of gaming development expertise which was acquired over the years with PlayStation business to provide gaming application optimised for smart devices including smartphones to users in Japan and Asia. The company will aim to deliver users with opportunity to casually enjoy full-fledged game titles in the new filed of the smart device market," a press release from the company reads. This won't be the first time we'd see PlayStation games on smartphones. In the past Run Sackboy! Run! a spin-off of popular PlayStation plat...